Colton-Pierrepont high schoolers to attend Internet safety event

COLTON  Students in grades seven through 12 at Colton-Pierrepont Central School will travel to St. Lawrence University, Canton, on Tuesday for their next COLTS Day, a day dedicated to Internet safety. COLTS stands for Citizenship Opportunity Literacy Technology Safety.

Superintendent Joseph A. Kardash said the event is being held in conjunction with International Safer Internet Day.

The outreach program, which is a class offered at SLU, was started by Donald E. Mesibov in 2002. The class has performed programs and given lessons to students in all grade levels, even giving presentations to senior citizens and recovering addicts.

Don Mesibovs outreach program will facilitate the day for Colton-Pierrepont students, Mr. Kardash said. We sent out a list of goals for he and his class, and theyre working on the logistics and putting together a program for us.

Mr. Mesibov said the students will be split into five groups, with seventh- and eighth-graders being combined and each other group consisting of the freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior classes.

Usually, though, the groups are much smaller.

The most weve ever done before is 30 to 35 students, Mr. Mesibov said. He said he told his students that putting together this event was going to be a monstrous task.

I had this blind faith in them that with enough time we could put something together, he said. I try to make this as student run as possible.

When the class met, it was joined by Mr. Kardash and Colton-Pierrepont administrative intern James Nee.

Mr. Mesibov said the days activities will consist of a two-hour presentation for each group on Internet safety with topics such as catfishing and cyber bullying being covered. The students will eat lunch on campus, participate in a panel discussion and tour the university.

Mr. Kardash said its his goal for the day to be 50 percent about Internet safety and 50 percent about showing the students what resources are available on campus and what college life is like.

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